User blog:Keiisnotthattired/Important Message In Regards To Site Files
Hello everyone. I'd like to share something of great importance with you in regards to our new findings on Tuesday. Some background on this (you can skip if you already know this): On the evening of January 2nd, 2018, I was speaking with Zimmer Twins users (both former and current) -GammaRay- (who now goes by UV), 0bsessed, and Blahbumian on MegaGamer1's Discord Server, "Carl's Awesome Discord". We made a discovery concerning a moviemaker similar to the Zimmer Twins Movie Maker. After a while (and at this time only 0bsessed and -GammaRay- remained with me as Blahbumian had gone to bed) we decided to download files for that Movie Maker. We couldn't get the Movie Maker to load on a web browser. (-GammaRay- logged off shortly after this time.) I downloaded a .swf decompiler and looked inside of the file to see if I could get it to work. I ended up getting it to work. I was curious to see if the Zimmer Twins Movie Maker's .swf file worked the same way (and I knew it had one- I'd snooped around with Inspect Element before). Skip forward a bit and I'm looking inside of editor.swf. I find the image for the Waitress hidden in the file. I share it on Discord with 0bsessed, who was just as shocked as I was about the discovery. Later on, I start to wonder if the Zimmer Twins Movie Maker is laid out the same as the Pixel Chix Movie Maker, because of them being so similar. I find out ZT has a "/assets/" directory of sorts and decided that it must be. I was able to get a hold of two .xml files which told me what .swf files to look for. In the end, I also got a .swf file for backgrounds and for every one of the starters- though this was by guessing they'd be there (I knew the clips would be, could tell that the starters would probably be, but the backgrounds was a complete guess). As I was downloading the .swf files for the clips, Psychic8 (who now goes by ElitePixel) came on the Discord Server and was shocked at our findings. He downloaded ZT's editor.swf file and made the same discoveries that I did. At around 4:00 AM PST (I think it was? May have been earlier, I don't even remember) I made the blog post about the Pixel Chix Movie Maker and the discovery of The Waitress. Now. I know we're all excited about new discoveries and such concerning The Zimmer Twins, but here's what has me concerned. I hope you don't take this as me trying to ruin the fun, because I'm not- heck, I'm super excited about these discoveries, too. I'm just concerned. First of all, The Zimmer Twins is owned by Lost The Plot Online, Inc. '''(There isn't anything I've found that actually says that zinc Roe Design owns The Zimmer Twins, just that it is a partner. However, one of Lost The Plot Online, Inc's directors is, according to this public record, Jason Krogh- founder of zinc Roe Design, co-founder of The Zimmer Twins, and Moderator on zimmertwins.com.) When each of us signed up to use The Zimmer Twins, we agreed to (or rather, our parents agreed to) a '''Terms of Use statement. Here is the link to the Terms of Use. I highly suggest giving it a thorough read. Here are the aspects of this agreement that have come to my attention and caused my concern: "The name "ZIMMER TWINS" and all of the characters contained on this site are trade-marks of LTPO, owned exclusively by LTPO and licensed to third parties in accordance with licence agreements. All materials, including but not limited to images, audio and video clips, animation, characters, diagrams, photographs and any and all information of any kind in any form (the "Materials") incorporated into, published or otherwise exhibited on this web site are protected by copyright or other intellectual property rights and are owned and controlled by LTPO. Any copying, reproducing, republishing, uploading, posting, modifying or transmission or distribution of any Materials is strictly prohibited and will be considered a violation of LTPO’s intellectual property rights and could result in ''legal liability and/or criminal sanction." I would assume that posting pictures to places like here, deviantArt, or other places would be acceptable and that posting videos to places like here and YouTube would be acceptable (here's a playlist of videos uploaded to YouTube by Zimmer Twins members that do contain Zimmer Twins content, made by the official Zimmer Twins YouTube channel, TheRealZimmerTwins). But I feel that the same doesn't go for site files such as the .swf files we came across. These .swf files are actual parts of the site. While there doesn't seem to be a rule against downloading these files, it seems quite clear to me that '''reuploading them is a strict violation of the Terms of Usage for The Zimmer Twins'. I feel like I'm the one that got us all into this, and as such I feel that it's my responsibility to make sure that nothing bad (or, as my anxiety would say, absolutely terrible) comes out of it. To those of you who have reuploaded these discovered files or plan to, please, for your own sake, ''don't. If you're a minor (under 18), then it wouldn't be just you getting sucked into (if you don't live in Canada) an international legal battle if LTPO were to sue- your parent(s)/legal guardian(s) would have to be involved as well. And either way, even if they wouldn't decide sue, I'd imagine that at some point in time LTPO or an affiliate would discover the reuploaded files and at the very least LTPO would send some kind of cease and desist. It's almost 3 o'clock in the morning, but I didn't want to wait until tomorrow to say anything. If anything were to happen getting any one of you into some sort of trouble as a result of this, or even if something small were to happen as a result of this like you losing your Zimmer Twins account, I would never be able to forgive myself for my own curiosity and for sharing my findings with you. I wouldn't be able to forgive myself because a discovery I shared caused pain. I'm sorry if this seems like an odd thing to post- but this just has me concerned and I want to make sure that everyone understands the rules that've been laid out for us. Thanks for taking the time to read this. '''TL;DR:' Downloading the files is probably okay as the Terms of Use does not seem to specify otherwise, but please, do not reupload them. It is illegal and I don't want for anyone to get into trouble because of it. But honestly, this is an important issue. I encourage you to read the whole post. Category:Blog posts